Hotel: Waldorf Astoria, New York
We arrived at the hotel after our 7 hour flight from London through garage entrance located on the lower ground where we were kindly greeted by the hotel porters.
Our bags were immediately given tags and placed on a trolley to be brought up by the porter.
We made our way upstairs to reception (without the inconvenience of heavy luggage).
We were greeted by a friendly receptionist who pulled up our details within seconds, a quick swipe of my card and we had our room keys in hand.
The lobby area is full of beautiful decor, if you make your way around the the gift shop there are wonderful artefacts dating way back, including a large hand written bill for a party that happened at The Waldorf back in 1935 (don’t hold me to that date I had to rack my brain but you’ll see it in the cabinet if your ever near The Waldorf you should go check these things out).
We were staying on the 23rd floor, the lifts require a key to operate between the hours of 6pm and 6am, despite being near the top floor the lifts are fast often causing our (family of 4) ears to pop.
Our room was a twin double room, with as stated two double beds in my opinion the beds were quite small, we ( 4 adults) were fine in the room but the beds could have done with a little more width.
The room had a desk, wired and wireless internet, a large tv with a selection of 25 channels, you can also select a movie (for a fee) from the list through the tv menu, a lot of the films were still in the cinema too.
The room also had a mini bar, stocked up with plenty of drinks and snacks…although it’s rarely needed given the amount of deli’s and various other food stores near the hotel.
The bathroom was very clean with a lovely beige tone and beige granite worktops, the shower was inside the bath making it perfect for both those who prefer a wake up shower or those who enjoy a long soak in the bath.
The rooms are serviced once a day and were always lovely and clean when we came back from a day out in NYC… this is probably more of a compliment to the house keeping staff than I could ever write in words, our room was full to the brim with bags of shopping, bags of empty boxes, empty drinks… 4 females in a room meant copious amounts of hair brushes, straighteners, make up, perfume… so to come back to a room that looked fresh and clean without the house keeping staff actually really touching our stuff was wonderful and perhaps would require a magic wand for someone like me to achieve the same :p.
The Park Avenue entrance is beautifully decorated (we went for the New Year) with Christmas decor, large Christmas tree’s placed around the famous piano Cole Porter would play and wonderful garlands place above each archway leading to various areas of the hotel.
As for local amenities, the hotel is fabulous, it’s situated between 49th and 50th on Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue.
It’s a short walk to Times Square perhaps 10 minutes, and there are plenty of other shops on the way like Saks, Radio City is also a short walk too.
We didn’t dine in the Waldorf this time round but on previous visits we have dined in the Bull and Bear, Oscars and have also been privileged enough to enjoy the buffet offered at the hotel which was absolutely beautiful (we ate in the hotel back in 2009/2010 over New Year).
Overall the hotel is a perfect piece of luxury, and whilst NYC may be full of people rushing everywhere to get to where they need, you can rest assure you will always come back to a clean, friendly and welcoming hotel.